If it was a 'tough choice' to cut my job, then come and tell the children why

Thanks to austerity, many kids in Enfield will now be missing my songs and stories – but it's the poorest who will miss them most

- Dave Pickering
- theguardian.com, Thursday 1 May 2014 04.00 EDT
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One of the leaving cards for Dave Pickering made by one of his pupils

One of the leaving cards for Dave Pickering made by a pupil

For the past five years I have been working as an early years library outreach worker, delivering stories and songs to children under the age of five in children's centres across the London borough of Enfield on behalf of the library service. Last month the team of five people that I was a part of was reduced to a team of one person.

The government says this is down to necessary austerity measures; the council calls it "leaner working"; the press call it the cuts; and activists call it "the war against the welfare state". For me it's a job lost, but many of the children just thought it was my birthday because everyone was giving me presents and cards. During my last week of work I documented the goodbyes in pictures and words on my blog. The gifts and goodbyes offered by the children and families I worked with are, I think, startling evidence of how much they valued this important service.

But the public valuing a public service isn't always enough to save it. The rhetoric of the cuts is that it's all about tough choices – but they're not tough on everyone, and they're not choices being made by everyone. Where are the choices for the communities I served? Many of them are struggling day to day, and every resource they find that offers them help may be cut tomorrow. They know about tough choices and they know who they're toughest for.

I worked with children and parents across Enfield. The Guardian is currently tracking the "Enfield Experiment". Like many parts of London, it is a place where you will find shocking disparities between the wealth and lifestyles of people in one area compared to those in another. I moved around the borough, working both in communities you might describe as affluent and those you might see as deprived.

My service was valued in both places, but the impact of its loss – and the loss of other even more essential and life-enhancing services – will be felt most keenly by the poorest and most at risk, rather than by people who can pay for private children's services and who don't need the extra help to combat the social conditions they find themselves in. We're not all in it together, because the impact of each cut is vastly different for each person depending on their situation.

The government is literally taking things away from children; it is dividing and dismantling communities and claiming that this is an unfortunate reality. There are different ways to save money, there are different ways to raise money. But if they're going to insist on this approach of taking things away from the people who most need them, the least they could do is explain to them why, talk to them, involve them in their own lives.

I would like the coalition government to look into the eyes of the children and mothers and fathers and carers who are losing these services the way I have. I want them to really take a moment on a human level, not as a statistic on a page or a line in an article, to understand what they are doing. It shouldn't be me struggling not to cry as I sing a final goodbye song to groups of children; it should be them.